


Down for the Count

by Kathar



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Post-(and pre-) mission sex, semi-graphic injury description, that last tag may not mean what you think it means
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:23:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil’s pretty sure no actual rules were broken. And in his defense, no one can be expected to resist Clint Barton’s ass. (Maybe he’ll leave that last part out of his report to Director Fury.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down for the Count

**Author's Note:**

> Injury details are in end notes if you need forewarning.  
> As always I owe thanks to two people: [Faeleverte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte), my partner in crime on all things Two-Man, who midwifed this; and Beta J, who did that thing she does where she unerringly identifies exactly what needs to change to make a story work. I am luckier than I deserve in both of you.
> 
> This story is a stand-alone but takes place in the [Two-Man ‘Verse,](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/TwoManVerse) pre-series start.

The ticking of the wall clock was going to drive him to distraction.

This, despite the fact that Phil knew perfectly well that Director Fury had a clock mounted in the waiting room outside his office for exactly that reason. In fact, he’d had it altered to tick a just slightly irregular time, the second hand jerking forward nearly imperceptibly to catch up after the stutter-steps. 

Phil had seen many junior SHIELD agents wait in that room, on those chairs that seemed comfortable until you’d sat in them for ten minutes, at which point you realized your thighs were digging in just a little. Senior Agent Phil Coulson’s little half-smile, as he sat in the one nice chair, the one next to Fury’s door, and scratched loudly with his pen across a portfolio (just slightly off the clock’s beat), had been known to break agents entirely.

That one nice chair was currently occupied by a half-filled file box.

Phil was sitting across from it, trying to get his story straight. He’d been composing and discarding attempts since before the mission had wrapped-- just as soon as it had become clear that his very best passive-aggressive bureaucratese was going to be required.

And it had started so _well_ was the hell of it.

Okay, maybe not so much _well_ as _with wanton abandon._

___  
"You," Phil Coulson said with emphasis as he shucked off his jacket, "have been mouthing off again, Agent.” 

Clint Barton's only reply was a muffled laugh, probably because his mouth had disappeared behind his t-shirt as he attempted to pull it off. His eyes twinkled over the wadded fabric for a moment before he freed himself and tossed his shirt at Phil, where it smacked him square on the chest and dropped to the floor.

"Gonna come over and shut me up, boss?" 

"Possibly," Phil said, stock still and staring at him. Clint's entire half-naked body was a dare, from his already-mussed light hair to the lips made to be bruised with hard kisses and the expanse of chest just begging to be nibbled on. He didn't dare glance at the low-slung waistline. The sheer sight of that little trail of hair disappearing beneath clothing would be more than enough to make him lose what remaining self-control he had.

They'd been doing this-- this whatever-it-was they were doing, occasionally falling into each other after difficult missions-- for only a very little while. Strictly speaking, it was probably against protocol, but they weren’t breaking any actual regulations. 

It _happened,_ sometimes. It could happen to anyone-- to agents you never expected, with partners you wouldn’t have guessed on a bet.

 _Everyone_ knew it happened-- long periods of close proximity and enormous spikes of adrenaline were in ready supply at SHIELD, after all. As long as no actual rules were being broken, where was the harm in it?

Pre-mission assignations, as Phil would later admit, were new territory, and Phil felt the ground shifting under his mental feet despite the fact that he was standing in Clint’s perfectly stable, perfectly average-to-slightly-upscale hotel room in the middle of a very stable tectonic plate. In some ways, the very fact that it could have been any of a number of the powdery-scented, blonde wood-furnished rooms they stayed in as often as they saw their own apartments actually made the risk greater. If it happened here where would it stop?

Phil’s long-held boundaries were crumbling with a sound like icebergs calving off a glacier. He was bobbing along, adrift in warmer currents, feeling himself melt a little more each time Clint turned that look-- yes, that one, right there-- on him.

"Fuck, boss, you're gonna make me come just from looking at me like that," Clint said, and Phil's eyes dilated so fast he could have sworn he _felt_ it happen. 

"Tempting, Clint," he said, attempting to keep his voice steady and knowing it was already oozing and thick with lust. 

Fuck, now his own _reactions_ to Clint were starting to turn him on. 

Heaving a steadying, readying breath, Phil stripped off his undershirt and advanced on his archer, his colleague, his friend, (his specialist,) his--  
Well, he'd just pushed Clint into the wall with both hands then thrust his tongue so deeply into Clint's mouth he might as well be performing a throat culture, so it would be silly not to use the word.

\--lover. 

Later, Phil would struggle trying to explain all of this: how it got so out of control, how badly he had let Clint's heckling during their evening mission briefing get under his skin, his own failure to stop them. And all he could really think of to defend himself-- and he was never going to say it out loud-- was that Clint's hands down the back of his trousers, scraping marks into the sensitive flesh of his ass, was enough to make even people with more resistance training than he had lose their minds. 

Right now, it seemed to him like the most important thing in the world to have Clint naked and kneeling on the bed in front of him, so he got to work on that, tearing Clint's fly open while he finished the kiss with a last determined push of tongue. He was already yanking Clint forward by the shoulders and shoving him to the bed as he pulled back. At that point, stripping Clint of his pants was as simple as latching onto the hems and tugging swiftly. 

Any possibility of stopping was gone after that-- there was a glorious man half-sprawled with his ass in the air on the edge of the bed, desperately trying to brace his knees and panting.  
"Holy... holy shit, Phil," Clint gasped, his voice muffled by his shoulder as he looked over it. "Got more of that in you?" 

"In _you_ soon enough," Phil growled. Which had seemed sexy at the time, but sitting in the uncomfortable office chair, listening to the off-tempo clock while trying to decide just how much to say, it sounded hopelessly awkward.

He wasn’t there yet, however. He was still tearing through the contents of his shaving kit until he found a bottle of lube. He poured it over his fingers and Clint's ass in the same move-- a time-saving measure, really, given where he was about to insert them.

Two fingers to start, because while Phil might kid himself that this only happened _occasionally_ , the previous occasion had been the rather electrifying end of a mission three days ago. Their private post-mission debrief had entailed a fair amount of "hooray, we're alive!" sex, and it was obvious Clint's body still remembered.

"NGH," Clint said from where his cheek was still smooshed against the bed, and Phil pulled his fingers back.

"Sorry--" 

"No, no--" One big hand reached back, moving blindly, until Clint was nearly folded in half. He found Phil's wrist and tried to get him started again. "No 'sorry’s, only more fingers, please."  
"I don't want it to hurt you, Clint," Phil said as he began to comply, waiting for some kind of reassurance in return.

"What if I want it to?" Clint said instead, and good lord that was _not_ what Phil had been expecting.

"Oh God," he groaned, feeling his knees buckle. He collapsed against Clint's back, forehead to his shoulder. The move canted his fingers up-- apparently at an angle Clint approved of, given his sudden moan and hiss.

"There, fuckin' _there_ ," Clint said when he could, and pushed back against him. "Don't you dare stop, Phil. Burns so damn _good_."

"Clint--" Phil knew his voice was coming out ragged and tortured. He couldn't bring himself to regret it, since he’d been driven speechless, and it was important that Clint knew how he felt about this. Clint's hand patted his arm in a soothing gesture utterly at odds with the way his body was writhing around and under Phil.

"'S all alright," he slurred. "I can take it. _Want_ to take it. Want you to _make_ me take it, boss. Want to feel it all day when I'm in my nest tomorrow-- still feel you deep in my ass, your voice in my ear. Know you’re still… please?"

It was a damned good thing Clint couldn't see his face, and he couldn't see Clint's, Phil reasoned. All the blood had drained from his cheeks and he felt close to breaking apart. Of course. After that last mission, after it had taken Clint and the rest of the team four hours to get Phil out of the van when it was trapped in the middle of the collapsed bridge, teetering on the edge of a twisted mass of rebar and concrete, of course. Of _course_ Clint needed something before they went back out. And it made it okay. This wasn’t just any mission. Wasn’t just any normal night. It was okay to do this.

"Tell me if it stops feeling good," Phil managed, pushing himself upright. "You've got to promise."

"Promise, boss," Clint moaned, and then began fumbling blindly at Phil's fly with his fingers. Phil batted his hand back down and dealt with the problem himself.  
"Want more, or are you ready for me?" he asked, largely to distract Clint while he made another one-handed dive into the shaving kit and came up with a condom. He tossed it onto Clint's back, directly between the shoulder blades, and Clint gave a seductive little wriggle when he felt it land.

"So fucking ready," Clint said, and Phil finished pulling himself out of his boxers. He had the condom on, his fingers out, and his cock poised and ready in what he felt was a very satisfactorily short span of time.

Clint seemed to think so too, as he was already hissing and grinding in pleasure when Phil was halfway into him. Little grunts of "yes" and "more" and "fuck yeah _Phil_ ," hurried him on, and he was balls-deep in Clint and thrusting before he was half aware of it. He lost time for a moment in the enveloping heat and slickness.

Phil would shift a little in that narrow chair, later, remembering this part of it. Not even those daunting circumstances could keep him from rousing a little at the memory. It was a problem he'd had with Clint since the very first mind-blowing time in the front seat of a car. 

Phil got lost in Clint more easily than in anyone he could remember in, well, ever. He put it down to aftereffects-- or fore-effects, in this case?-- of their easy synchronization during missions. If only he could find a tactful way to phrase all that.

"Harder, Phil," Clint groaned, bringing him back to full awareness, "please, harder, please-- ohfuck. There!" Phil obliged happily, driving Clint's shoulders onto the bed with the force of his thrusts. "Yeah!" The dark satisfaction in his voice went straight to Phil's groin, and he retaliated by shifting to lean over Clint, bracing his hands on Clint's biceps, so he could bite deep into the muscle of his shoulder.

Clint nearly bucked him off the bed at that, and Phil thrust back roughly before he even realized what he was doing. 

"Yes-- again!" Clint said as Phil drove his entire body down into the mattress. It seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do to comply, so Phil bit and sucked, worrying at the flesh a little longer this time. Clint tasted like salt and wax and smelled like hotel soap. It was utterly intoxicating. Clint moaned beneath him.

"How're you holding up, Agent?" Phil asked when he pulled back, and Clint chuckled, low in his throat.

"Everything's peachy down here, boss,” he said, and there was a purr of satisfaction running through it. “Just getting split open by a man so hot he oughta be illegal. Don't you worry about me."

"Well," Phil said, against the rush of heat that flooded his body, "good to know. I want to make sure you have everything you need."

"Need more of your cock, sir. Much as you can fucking give me." Clint was panting with every hard thrust, but his smirk was beginning to reassert itself in his tone. It was entrancing, but it also meant Phil wasn't trying hard enough. He added a twist to his thrusts, and Clint whimpered. "Oh, god, like that! More!"

"Where _are_ your manners, Agent Barton?"

" _Please_ , sir! Please give me more of your thick, hard cock."

("There's nothing in our relationship that would prevent us from maintaining a professional demeanor," Phil would say later, and he could even say it straight-faced. "Agent Barton has never questioned any order-- any _important_ order-- I give him.")

“Anything you want, Clint,” Phil said through his laughter. Whatever Clint’s next comeback would have been turned into a wordless yell as Phil drove into him. The hotel walls were actually reasonably thick, but not-- Phil was fairly sure-- thick enough to muffle _that_. Before he could form the words “not so loud,” Clint was scrabbling forward and reaching for a pillow. He bit down so hard feathers flew.

(“Agent Barton is perfectly capable of being discreet, and we would never intentionally allow our off-duty activities to compromise a mission.”)

It was the feathers that really got to Phil, or them and the way Clint kept bucking back up onto him, sweat prickling up on his back with the strain of keeping himself braced, skin dimpling under Phil’s fingers. There was no way Phil could be expected to last, not when someone as graceful, as powerful, as Clint was shivering apart beneath him, so far gone he was worrying at a pillow to keep from screaming the building down.

Phil fell forward again, pushing Clint into the pillow and holding him down with one hand so only his profile was visible. 

“Can you come for me?” he whispered in Clint’s ear, and Clint nodded, his face screwed tightly shut.

Phil reached his other arm around and grabbed for Clint’s cock, nearly sobbing himself as the hot, velvety length of it twitched in his palm. He jerked swiftly, added a little swipe of the thumb to the head, and Clint’s eyes flew open.

“ _Phil_ ” he moaned and arched his back. Phil held on hard, buried deep within him, and thrust now in short, sharp little jerks that matched the work of his hand. “PHIL,” Clint said again, then turned and mashed his face into the pillow.

“NnnnnnnnnnnnnnAGH!” he cried, and he was coming, his cock pulsing within the circle of Phil’s hand, warm wetness covering Phil’s fingers. Phil buried his face in the crook of Clint’s neck as Clint convulsed around his cock and came too-- little witless thrusts that buried Clint further into the bed as his vision whited out and his ears rang. 

Clint was still crying out underneath him, something primal and cut off. It came from a long distance away, and Phil collapsed to the mattress, stripping off the condom as he did and tossing it listlessly over the side of the bed.

They rarely cuddled after sex. They rarely had the opportunity to cuddle-- hell, often they didn’t have a bed to cuddle _in_. One post-mission blow job up against a pine tree had left marks on Phil’s back for days. So he wasn’t expecting to cuddle; it didn’t surprise him at all that Clint just laid there for a moment.

When he stayed still after that moment, though, face turned away from Phil, not getting up to shower or turning over to say something lewd and snarky, Phil sat up in alarm. He gathered the tattered remains of his wits to him.

“Clint? Are you okay? Clint? I didn’t hurt you? You said you were-- oh. Hell.”

Clint’s big hands were covering his face, but there was a smear of blood against his cheek. Phil glanced down quickly, his heart dropping straight into his stomach, but no-- none of the general mess was blood. That seemed localized to Clint’s face and the pillow.

“Phil?” Clint whimpered after a moment. “Promise you’re not gonna yell?”

“I--” Phil could honestly find nothing to say to that. “Okay?” 

Slowly, the fingers curled back from Clint’s face, and brought specks of blood and feathers down with him.

“What…” Phil said, and then stopped. There was blood on the edge of-- no, oh fuck _in_ Clint’s left eye, beginning to turn the white red. “What the hell happened?”

“A feather, I think,” Clint rasped. “Felt it happen just when I was coming. Phil… Phil I can’t see right.”

It was at that point that Phil Coulson began composing the injury report in his head, trying to figure out how to most neutrally phrase “scratched his eye on a feather pillow while in the middle of having his brains fucked out,” even while he was jumping off the bed.

He sorted out the order of the calls he was going to have to make, to the team medic to come to the room, to central command asking them to bring in another sniper, letting medical know they had incoming, even as he was dabbing a wet cloth at the corner of Clint’s eye out and checking it-- the entire eye was holding blood now but the cornea appeared unharmed, which meant they’d both live to see another day. Probably.

So he had much of what he thought the interview with Director Fury was going to consist of plotted out in his head before the medic had appeared at Clint’s door.  
Director Fury, as it would turn out, had his own plans.

_____

“It looks worse than it is,” Coulson said, resisting the urge to fold his hands in his lap or wipe his palms on his knees as he sat down in the narrow chair in front of Director Fury’s desk-- close kin to the torture devices that populated the waiting room. Nick Fury was looking as far removed as Phil had ever seen him from his old friend, the one who’d been in too many rough spots at his side. He was slumped back in his chair, glowering from the depths of its high leather back, fingers templed.

“Which part?” he rumbled.

“All of it?”

The actual report, for the record, had said that “Agent Barton suffered a laceration of the conjunctiva while recreating in his room before the mission. Vision is impaired due to watering and irritation, but full recovery is expected within a week [see attached medical form CR-31-241 Rev. 7]. Injury was inflicted by the quill end of a feather ejected by a poorly-constructed down pillow on Agent Barton’s bed. Revision of guidelines for selecting accommodations to include a preference for polyfiber bedding, is indicated.”

(He’d had plenty of time to get the wording just right while he got himself and Clint dressed. The phrasing tumbled in his head while he held the archer-- the useless archer as long as his eye couldn’t focus-- in between his legs, huddled in a corner of the room. He refined the passive voice while waiting for the team medic to knock on the door. One hand curved over Clint’s all the while, helping hold a cold washcloth to his eye. The other rubbed little circles around Clint’s… Barton’s… shoulder. Neither of them spoke.)

“Phil,” Fury bit off, rubbing the bridge of his nose for a moment, “it’s a nice report, but I don’t believe a word of it. Barton’s done a lot of crazy shit in his time here, but this is a new goddamn one on me. He poked himself in the eye with a feather. In the goddamn eye, Phil. The night before he was due to take out a dude who’s only been on our priority list for the last three _years_. Our top sniper, brought down by a motherfucking piece of fluff.”

“Accidents happen, sir.”

“Yes, yes, yes. And I’m sure the team medic and the doctors are all gonna submit reports that agree completely with Barton’s and yours, which is a hell of a convenient thing for you. And I won’t believe a word of any of _them_ , either. Thankfully, this was the only complication your mission had. But that leaves me time to wonder. You know what I’m wondering now, Agent?”

Any number of things, but surely Fury couldn’t _know_ , and so Phil had assured Clint, whispering it in his ear as he tucked the man into the back of the SHIELD SUV, which had just disgorged the replacement sniper. (She was a skinny kid with a big ego, and Phil ought to have known her but didn’t. Then again, ever since Nairobi he’d worked practically exclusively with Agent Barton when he needed a sniper-- since _before_ Nairobi, really.) Phil was pretty sure he’d added words to the effect of “I’ll take care of it,” and “try to rest,” but of course Clint wasn’t going to pay attention to that. Had he thought to restrict Clint’s range access? Trying to shoot now, when he couldn’t focus, was only going to agitate him more, and it would be just like him to try-- 

“I couldn’t guess, sir,” Phil said, realizing that Fury had not actually been asking a rhetorical question and had been waiting for an answer a bit too long.

“You know, that’s it. That’s damn typical, is what it is.” Abruptly, Fury pushed back from his chair and stood, his glower rising along with him. “Barton’s a bad goddamn influence on you, Phil. Has been from the start, and it’s only getting worse. You were the epi-fucking-tome of professionalism, and now look at you-- look at me, yelling at you! What the hell happened last night, _Agent_? And don’t give me that bullshit from your report. In your own fucking words. How did a top specialist end up brought down by a goddamn feather?”

“To… be fair, at the time the quill came free, it was not exactly the focus of attention.” Phil laced his hands in front of him on the seat, turning nervously to follow Fury as he came out from behind the desk.

“What _was_ the focus of attention, Agent Coulson?” Fury was pacing back and forth across the small office, his black coat tails swishing as he went. Not that he needed the intimidation factor at all.

“I… I suspect Agent Barton was… attempting to distract himself. As I understand the matter, he was... unsettled... after our previous mission. He did appear so in the briefing.”

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe he poked himself in the eye with a feather in order to settle his nerves, Coulson. Fine. He was distracting himself. Video games? Porn on the tv?”

“No…”

“Of course not, those don’t destroy pillows. Too early for him to be asleep and have nightmares. I assume you’d have flat-out said if it was a pillow fight, plus some things I can’t believe even of Barton. So. I think we know _what_ he was doing.”

“I… suppose we do. It’s not against regulations, as long as he’s not on company time.”

“PHIL,” Fury roared. “It was the _night before a mission._ ”

“The team was all on leave for the evening and had been since we finished briefing. No company time, no company resources; I’m fairly certain no _actual_ rules were broken, Director.” Phil was pretty sure his life was going to start flashing in front of his eyes any moment now.

“Really? And just who was he distracting himself _with_? Seems to me, from your very thorough mission report that the rest of the team had gone out for dinner?”

“Er, yes, Agent May had heard good things about the kim bob, I think they all wanted to--”

“ _Goddamnit_ , Phil, the man works fast but he’s not superhuman. He didn’t have time to pick up a civilian. That leaves only one person Agent Barton _could_ have been ‘recreating’ with, and that’s the agent in charge of the mission. Which, off hours or not, is a little bit suspect, don’t you think, Agent Coulson?” That one eye was levelled at him, and Phil wondered if he’d ever actually known the man in front of him. He swallowed hard against the memory of Clint’s biceps flexing under his grasping hands, his hips arching into Phil’s. Opened his mouth to deny everything, and:

“Barton gets nervous before missions, and it seemed like a better idea to calm him down that way than to let him wander off to a bar.”

“Really? You couldn’t think of _any_ other way to calm him down? No. Forget that. Missions, plural? There’s been more than one mission?”

“No, I can honestly say this is the first mission we’ve… that it has been necessary to… engage in interpersonal rel--” He wasn’t blushing, he’d taken out entire enemy bases dressed only in his skivvies and a tie, this was nothing, it was _nothing_.

“‘To fuck’, Phil. Spit it out.” Fury said, not unkindly, and took himself back behind his desk, still watching Phil.

“This is the first time we’ve had sex before a mission.” There. That wasn’t so hard. Was it? Who was hard? Phil was so far beyond embarrassed at this point that he was free-floating in a post-blushing space. He was fine, he was zen.

“What about after?”

Phil shrugged.

“He gets wired after missions, too. Many agents do.”

Fury nodded, as if he’d expected as much. (Of course he’d expected as much, he’d probably known from the beginning-- god, he’d probably already divined which missions, where they’d found privacy, what positions they’d been in, and who had come first, just from Phil’s pattern of mission reports. Oh god, now he was thinking about Clint coming again, shoulders tensed, thighs quivering… that line of thought needed to end immediately.)

“Well, now that we have _that_ out of the way, why don’t you explain to me just what the _fuck_ you were thinking, Agent Coulson?” Fury sat down in his chair again with a sudden fwump, and his coat drifted down around him.

Phil straightened his back, took a deep breath, and shut his eyes.

“The briefing was… a difficult one…” he began, hoping against hope Fury wouldn’t pry too closely into his carefully-edited version of events.

There had been a time-- not Nairobi, another time, Quito was it? Or maybe Bangalore-- hard to tell anymore, what with time, distance, and drugs between his memories and the actual fact-- when Phil had spent several hours in the company of a CIA interrogator who’d mistaken him for an enemy agent. Getting out of that alive, having won the interrogator over without breaking cover? Up until tonight, it was the hardest single thing Phil had done while sitting frozen to an uncomfortable chair.

This pretty much beat that night to hell and back. As time went on, in fits and starts like that damned clock out in the waiting room, Phil realized he was beginning to disassociate, to reach back into that zen state. It was his only defense-- against his memories of Clint’s skin, his moans, his bendy... _everything_ , as much as against Fury’s ire. He was under no illusions about his own ability to hide _anything_ from Fury at this point. Neutral language aside, it must have been obvious. He was cracking open and Clint was spilling out of every fissure. But for both their sakes’, he was going to try.

He couldn’t bring Clint down with him, if that was where he was going.

Finally, Phil brought the story up to the point where he’d bundled his injured lover-- agent, his injured agent-- into the back of an SUV and had started the emergency briefing for his replacement. He stuttered to a halt and sat back, letting the silence build between them.

Fury was still sitting, his I’m Dealing With Idiots face pretty much permanently etched into his features after the recitation. 

Just as Phil realized he was turning blue from holding his breath and wondered if fainting was actually the wisest thing he could do at the moment, Fury shifted. 

“I can’t believe I have to do this, Phil. Calling you out on the goddamn carpet for fucking a specialist on company time. You know how deep this kind of shit can get.” 

“We-- sir--” Phil swallowed. 

“Coulson?” 

“I realize it’s not exactly protocol-- okay, I realize it’s frowned upon. But there’s no basis for disciplinary action against Agent Barton here. No actual rules were broken.”

“Are you even hearing yourself, Coulson? No _actual_ rules were broken? Just like no actual phorms are philled out by your agent-- and yourself on occasion-- with little inside jokes? I suppose phucking the guy is just the next step on the spiral staircase of inappropriateness you two’ve been tumbling down. I can’t let you get your head-- or the rest of you-- so wrapped up in Barton that it affects missions, Coulson.”

Phil narrowed his eyes, and stared down his superior officer, his Director, his no-good lousy interfering friend. Fury’s little intrusion into Clint’s phorm-based pranks on Phil had nearly derailed their friendship at one point.

“I ought to have thought more about that damned sign when you put it up, I see. I’m-- we’re-- not wrapped up. Our performance is exemplary, and you and I both know it. Neither of us are going to let ourselves get carried away. The feather accident could as easily have happened if Barton were trying to bury himself in pillows in the morning.”

Which he’d seen Clint do often enough on ops when he happened to get an eastern window and too-thin curtains; he was not a natural early riser. Long ago, Phil had started trying to take the bed closest to the window whenever they shared a room, to provide a little shelter for him from the morning sun. 

Fury grunted, raising an eyebrow-- the one behind the patch-- at that.

“Just fucking, nothing more, you’re telling me.”

“That’s what I’m telling you. We’re friends off-mission. On-mission, I have the highest respect for Agent Barton, and I feel our mission success rate suggests we work well together, even if our methods are somewhat unorthodox. This is merely an extension. Nothing more.”

“Now you’re over-explaining, Phil. I really do not want to hear it. Fine.”

“Fine?” For a moment, he wasn’t sure he understood the meaning of the word correctly. (Fine, like the hair on Clint’s chest, like the down floating around him as Phil pounded him into the mattress.)

“Fine. Stop explaining, I believe you. It’s just sex, in a professional relationship so goddamn inappropriate already that I’d have shut it down years ago if it weren’t for the fact that the two of you almost never fail me. And when you do, it’s usually due to something so absurd I want to pretend it doesn’t exist-- which is what we’re gonna do here. So you’re gonna keep it off the premises and off company time and strictly extracurricular, and I am gonna trust _you_ to be an adult, and take your word that Barton can pretend to be one over this, and we are never, ever going to talk about this again, got that?”

“Sir. Yes, sir.” The chair nearly fell over in Phil’s haste to escape it. He looked back at it briefly, in betrayal. He was a Level 6 agent after all, he ought not feel like the kid in the schoolyard or the grunt barely out of basic, no matter how loud Fury bellowed.

“Hey, Cheese?” Phil stopped with his hand on the door and turned, wary. Fury was staring at him, poker-faced. “Speaking off the record? That’s a damn fine ass, you just make sure you tap it where I can’t see it.”

Phil fled.

____

While Phil had been completing the operation, Medical had checked Clint out and made their pronouncements (and a single stitch-- something Phil was trying to avoid picturing). By now, Clint would be well on his way to recovery and would probably have tried to chew a hole in the wall in an attempt to escape had they not let him go. 

Phil ought to head down to the range, make sure the man hadn’t managed to break or cajole his way in. 

Yes, he’d head to the range, drag Barton out if he was there, and send him off to his home to rest. Just like a good agent in charge should do with members of his team. Nothing more than that. He’d prove they were both the professionals he’d called them.

Instead of the range, Phil found himself in front of his office door, and gave in to the temptation to lean against it. The range could wait for a minute. Or five. He was stupidly tired-- he hadn’t slept since the incident, what with organizing the changeover in personnel, a new briefing, actually running the mission, completing the report, and getting chewed out by Fury in the early morning hours. He was still dressed in the suit from the mission debriefing (which, come to think of it, probably still smelled lightly of Clint-- that might be why he could not get his mind off the man’s ass).

The door was, of course, unlocked, and he stumbled inside.

Clint was asleep on his couch, tucked into a ball far too small to reasonably be comprised of a full-sized, generously-shouldered man. He blinked and jerked upright as the door opened, his bandage askew on his eye.

Before he knew how it happened, Phil was on his knees in front of Clint, re-adjusting the bandage while soothing him awake.

Clint kissed him. 

Just a peck, really, practically nothing at all. Just a “hello, good morning, thanks for keeping light from stabbing me in the already-painful cornea” sort of kiss, but Phil was just fucking done. He listed against Clint, forehead to forehead. Every unfairly long lash on Clint’s uninjured eye seemed to blur in his vision.

“What happened?” Clint asked.

“The Director expressed his strong desire that we keep our professional and personal lives separate, and that was the end of it.”

“He… wait, what? He knows we’re--? No, back up, he knows we’re-- and he doesn’t mind?”

“Having sex, Clint, you can say it. And yes, he knows, and he reminded me that protocol dictates we shouldn't, so if we are going to be that stupid, we keep it out of SHIELD.”

“Can I say ‘fucking’ instead? I really prefer that, Phil,” Clint leered at him, and good god that man could rebound from panicked to lecherous fast. If he kept smiling in that fine disturbing way, Phil was going to break his promise to Fury before the first hour was out. He needed to set some boundaries, immediately.

“Pretty fond of it myself,” Phil said instead. “But at the moment you’re exhausted and I’m exhausted,” he tried to rally, “so c’mon up.” 

Clint allowed himself to be levered to his feet, and draped himself over Phil perhaps more than was strictly necessary.

“So, where are we going?” he asked as they were halfway out the door. “I can get back to my place without an escort, if you need to--”

“You’re coming home with me-- stop looking at me like that, Barton-- to rest. You’re coming home to rest, so I know I’m not going to find you in the middle of the range attempting to focus one-eyed and destroying your eyesight.” 

Clint was still looking at him askance, though-- like Phil had just walked up and conked him on the back of the head with a cast iron chicken fryer.

“It’s not a big deal, Clint,” Phil sighed, not sure who he was trying to convince. “It’s just more convenient.” Because fuck it, they _were_ professionals, and taking Clint into his home wasn’t going to change that.

“Sure, sure it is,” Clint said after a moment, then shifted until he was suddenly snuggled under Phil’s arm. “Especially if you’re planning on throwing me down on your couch and fucking me until I scream. Strictly in a professional manner, of course.”

Phil did not blush, and he certainly had no plans in that direction. No, not even though he’d been half-hard that entire meeting because he kept thinking about the night before, about Clint’s skin slipping under his thighs as he… well, it didn’t matter, because this was just practical, as he was about to explain to Clint.

“Why not the bed?” was what he actually said.

“Bed next. That is, if you’re sure you don’t own any feather pillows.”

“I don’t,” Phil said, hearing the ice creak in his heart, and made a mental note to double-check before he let Clint into the bedroom.

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Injury is an eye abrasion. He’ll be fine.  
> Reality is always stranger than fiction. Clint’s injury is stolen from [this incident](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-05-25/sports/0505250242_1_hotel-room-pillow-feather). Hotels are dangerous places.
> 
> I love your comments and kudos, and I hug them and squeeze them and keep them forever. Even if you just want to yell at me about the eye injury thing. I also tumbl as: [kat-har](http://kat-har.tumblr.com/)


End file.
